William B. Taylor is Muriel McKevitt Sonne Professor of History, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Research for this book took him to Spain, Guatemala, various archives and libraries in the US, and many places in Mexico. It is a culmination of many years studying religious life and especially political and cultural power in colonial Latin America. Earlier books include Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (1996) and Shrines and Miraculous Images: Essays on Religious Life in Mexico Before the Reforma (2010). He is the recipient of several awards including the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association.

The first comprehensive historical study of the images and shrines of New Spain, rich in stories and patterns of change over time.

Part I. Bearings: Historical Patterns and Places of Image Shrines: 1. Formative developments, 1520s-1720s; 2. Growth, other changes, and continuities in the late colonial period; 3. Miraculous images of Christ and the Virgin Mary; 4. Advocations of the Virgin Mary in the colonial period; Part II. Soundings: Divine Presence, Place, and the Power of Things: 5. Making miracles; 6. Relics, images, and other numinous things; 7. Religious prints and their uses; 8. Placing the cross in colonial Mexico; 9. Pilgrims, processions, and Romerías; Conclusion; Appendix 1. A checklist of colonial image shrines; Appendix 2. When shrines began; Appendix 3. Other saints, a brief appraisal; Index.